The retail merchandiser and supermarket industries have placed an impetus on reducing labor costs. Additionally, they have expended time and energy in a variety of different ways to reduce or eliminate the amount of time required to process items to be purchased by a customer. To that end, there have been a number of self-checkout system concepts developed which attempt to substantially eliminate the need for a checkout clerk.
It has been found, however, that some customers, through repetitive use of a self-checkout system, become expert users and do not require the same instructional messaging as novice or problematic users. Audio and video instructional presentations are used at displays of self-checkout systems to help make the system more intuitive to first instance users. Thus, for experienced users, the instructional presentations are no longer required since they unnecessarily lengthen transaction time.
Another drawback of non-customizable self-checkout systems is that a universal system speed impedes efficient customer throughput. Customers generally want to proceed with and finish the self-checkout process as expeditiously as possible. Self-checkout systems with single speed functionality slow down user transaction time due to unnecessary system prompting and extensive item security checks.
Additionally, the one-size fits all approach to customer interface components has not enabled prior art systems to present unique marketing information tailored to individual consumers. Therefore, self-checkout customers are missing out on individualized promotional discounts they could be provided, for example, through customized shopping habit analysis, and retailers may be missing out on potential ad revenue for such a feature.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,676,343, 4,792,018, 5,340,970, and 6,497,362, commonly-assigned with the present application (and incorporated herein by reference), present systems for operator-unattended checkout with particular concern for detection of customer fraud and deterrence of the same. These systems process orders at single speeds without customer-specific customization based on a universal security standard. Additionally all customers are presented with a universal informational and instructive display configuration that does not take into account that some customers may be more experienced with self-checkout than others.
Prior art processing of items at self-checkout systems has been based on an assumption that the consuming public requires universal security, instructional display and speed configuration for conducting item transactions. What is needed is a self-checkout system that can process learned customer utilization data, display unique promotional discounts and enable selective system interface/processing parameters to meet unique customer profiles. Moreover, what is also needed is a system which can also automatically configure “security zone” specifications to optimize customer throughput.